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This module contains functions that can read and write Python values in a binary
format. The format is specific to Python, but independent of machine
architecture issues (e.g., you can write a Python value to a file on a PC,
transport the file to a Sun, and read it back there). Details of the format are
undocumented on purpose; it may change between Python versions (although it
rarely does). [1]

This is not a general “persistence” module. For general persistence and
transfer of Python objects through RPC calls, see the modules pickle and
shelve. The marshal module exists mainly to support reading and
writing the “pseudo-compiled” code for Python modules of .pyc files.
Therefore, the Python maintainers reserve the right to modify the marshal format
in backward incompatible ways should the need arise. If you’re serializing and
de-serializing Python objects, use the pickle module instead – the
performance is comparable, version independence is guaranteed, and pickle
supports a substantially wider range of objects than marshal.

Warning

The marshal module is not intended to be secure against erroneous or
maliciously constructed data. Never unmarshal data received from an
untrusted or unauthenticated source.

Not all Python object types are supported; in general, only objects whose value
is independent from a particular invocation of Python can be written and read by
this module. The following types are supported: booleans, integers, floating
point numbers, complex numbers, strings, bytes, bytearrays, tuples, lists, sets,
frozensets, dictionaries, and code objects, where it should be understood that
tuples, lists, sets, frozensets and dictionaries are only supported as long as
the values contained therein are themselves supported; and recursive lists, sets
and dictionaries should not be written (they will cause infinite loops). The
singletons None, Ellipsis and StopIteration can also be
marshalled and unmarshalled.

There are functions that read/write files as well as functions operating on
strings.

Write the value on the open file. The value must be a supported type. The
file must be an open file object such as sys.stdout or returned by
open() or os.popen(). It must be opened in binary mode ('wb'
or 'w+b').

If the value has (or contains an object that has) an unsupported type, a
ValueError exception is raised — but garbage data will also be written
to the file. The object will not be properly read back by load().

The version argument indicates the data format that dump should use
(see below).

Read one value from the open file and return it. If no valid value is read
(e.g. because the data has a different Python version’s incompatible marshal
format), raise EOFError, ValueError or TypeError. The
file must be an open file object opened in binary mode ('rb' or
'r+b').

Note

If an object containing an unsupported type was marshalled with dump(),
load() will substitute None for the unmarshallable type.

Return the string that would be written to a file by dump(value,file). The
value must be a supported type. Raise a ValueError exception if value
has (or contains an object that has) an unsupported type.

The version argument indicates the data format that dumps should use
(see below).

Indicates the format that the module uses. Version 0 is the historical
format, version 1 shares interned strings and version 2 uses a binary format
for floating point numbers. The current version is 2.

The name of this module stems from a bit of terminology used by the designers of
Modula-3 (amongst others), who use the term “marshalling” for shipping of data
around in a self-contained form. Strictly speaking, “to marshal” means to
convert some data from internal to external form (in an RPC buffer for instance)
and “unmarshalling” for the reverse process.